Peels and Meals
The new President of an Earthmoving Equipment plant in South India, was a Qualitist. He had the knack of spotting chronic problems in any organization.
On his first day at the plant he questioned the volume of garbage outside the messy workers canteen. This problem was further magnified by the fact that the garbage was stored below the staircase leading to the neat officers club, located above the canteen.
The President questioned the volume and cost of the garbage. The plant operated in three shifts. A key piece of information was that the local municipality refused to carry all the canteen garbage. This resulted in the daily rental of private dump trucks. These dump trucks cost the plant Rs 7,000 per day, on an average. Over and above that was the cost of wasted cooked food. Collectively, we refer to this as Cost Of Poor Quality (COPQ).
A management team was appointed by the President to solve this chronic problem.
In order to diagnose the problem, the team set up two bins: One for avoidable waste (such as cooked food); and the other for unavoidable waste (such as peels and packaging). Avoidable waste accounted for two-thirds of the total canteen waste,
Thereafter, the team interviewed workers at meal time, across three shifts. Here is a flavour of responses to the question “Why do you waste food?”
- We are in South India and you serve us North Indian food
- The meal break is only 30 minutes, and the lines are too long. So I pile up food
- The ladles are too large. I could do with smaller servings
- The ‘thalis’ are too large. So I pile up food.
The remedial actions involved:
- Inviting a team of wives, by rotation, to set the menu and supervise the cooking
- Scrapping the large ladles and ‘thalis’, and replacing them with smaller ones
- Investing the saved COPQ into workers welfare.
The workers canteen now doubles up as a recreation club with facilities for table tennis and carrom.
The President won the Trust of workers.
WHAT ARE THE LESSONS LEARNED FOR THIS QUALITIST LEADER?
Organisation waste MUDA is a chronic problem I’m every organisation .It is the result of bad planning and execution of the processses and the
implications are in millions of rupees -COPQ.
Begin with measuring COPQ measurement and and build that into the Staregic tasks to improve profitability.
Agree. In fact, make Quality a part of the Strategic Plan. Integrate with Customer; Technology; Marketing; HR Finance
The minute observation of garbage outside the workers canteen, lead him to looked into various other issues like cost of dump truck, workers dissatisfied with the meals and waste of cooked food. A small dig into the issue lead to successful outcome of cost saving, workers happy with the meals, hygiene atmosphere outside canteen and the +ve impact on the overall productivity of the workers.
A responsibility is always taken and protectiveness always pay off. A great leader is one who does not wait for the result of the outcome and how to solve it rather than work on the current issue with clarity in mind.
Chronic Problems do not come with alarms. One has to proactively deep dive. They are hidden in the budget.